Microsoft buys LinkedIn for $26.2 billion

Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft is buying LinkedIn. The all-cash deal is worth just over $26 billion.

The deal was announced in pre-market trading this morning. LinkedIn shares were trading up nearly 50 percent, while Microsoft was down five percent, according to CNBC. In Q1 2016, LinkedIn reported earnings of $861 million.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner will remain to run the company and report directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The deal has been approved by both boards and will close later in the year. It’s unlikely that regulators would seek to block the deal.

In the video below, Nadella speaks about connecting Microsoft’s productivity tools to “the professional network” (LinkedIn). I think what that means as a practical matter is LinkedIn integration into Microsoft software tools and vice versa.

Nadella says in the video that he has been thinking about this for a long time.

The deal makes sense for both companies. The interesting question to contemplate now is how deep the integration will be and what new offerings might come out of the combination, given that Microsoft now owns “the professional graph.”